Understanding how perceptions of foreigners affects us, learning culture through anime, and time to study some Japanese!

All countries are affected to a certain extent by the views of foreigners. I've read that the Chinese never really thought much of the series of loosely connected walls that ran through their country until foreigners came in and started raving about it, naming it the Great Wall and everything. America certainly has internalized the image of Ellis Island and Lady Liberty that was brought in by European immigrants over the past 150 years, making it part of our modern self-perception. Japan is also affected by the opinions of foreigners here, and in many cases the passion gaijin feel for Japan spreads to Japanese people as well. A show my wife likes to watch a lot is NHK's Eigo de Shabera-Night, which explores how Japanese can best go about learning English, inviting guests like former U.N. Assistant Secretary General Yasushi Akashi to talk about how they struggled at mastering the difficult language. The other day they had a segment that took viewers on a tour of Kyoto hosted by bilingual foreigners who lived in the city. It was interesting to see Kyoto through the eyes of these gaijin, and hear them rave about their favorite parts of the city -- the passion they felt for Kyoto was really contagious.

One of the things I like about Japanese animation is that it always opens your mind to new cultural concepts, and even something like how names work in Japanese can be gleaned from anime. Names function quite differently in politeness-sensitive Japan than in the U.S., and it's common for people to use keigo (polite speech) when addressing others in a school or work setting, or if the person is older than you, e.g. "Fujita-san" or "Tomo-san" (fairy formal) rather than just "Tomo" (very informal). Lately I've been on an Orange Road kick, watching the second movie, the novel for which I translated and put on the net a decade ago (link on J-List site). In the movie, the main character Kyosuke gets "time-slipped" to three years into the future, which causes some challenges when his "younger" sister starts talking differently to him because she's technically older now. Another plot point revolves around when he started calling his girlfriend Madoka by her first name (as informal as you can get in Japan -- one guess when that was). Another old-school fave of mine is Maison Ikkoku, the Rumiko Takahashi classic that tells the story of college student Godai's attempts to woo the manager of the apartment he lives in, the recently widowed Kyoko. Because she's older than him, he calls her "Kyoko-san" during their courtship, and only at their wedding reception, after he's become her husband and thus on the same level as her, can be bring himself to drop the formal -san ending and call her by her name, Kyoko.

Every year in December, thousands of foreigners take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, the primary way of testing your Japanese language skills. Once upon a time I disliked Japan's test-based approach to learning, yet after using the JLPT to help improve my own language ability, I can recommend it as a good way to make yourself study -- there's nothing like having a clear goal in front of you to motivate yourself. There are four levels to the test, set up so that you can try a new level each year. Level four is the easiest, testing hiragana, katakana and a hundred or so kanji, while level one is super hard, being the goal you need to clear if you want to attend a Japanese university. By happy coincidence, J-List happens to have some good study tools for the JLPT, including previous year's tests you can use for practice. The test is given at various cities around Japan and the world, and the deadline for applying is coming up within a few weeks -- so this is your official wake-up call if you'd like to challenge the test this year. If you'd like information on how you can sign up for the test, this siteis a good page to start (although I apologize if things aren't as clear as they could be).

Announcing the newest line of product offerings: kanji hats with our famous wacky Japanese messages on them! Our new professionally embroidered hats are a great way to wear a unique Japanese message on your head and show off your uniqueness to everyone. Manufactured by Alternative Apparel, the stylish Vintage Twill baseball caps are great, enzyme-washed for extra softness and featuring a sturdy brass buckle for "set and forget" head sizing. Enjoy our first two hats, our best-selling "Looking for a Japanese Girlfriend" design and a favorite of mine, our "Otaku" Oakley logo parody.

Remember that J-List has plenty of cool "back to school" items for you or your young ones, from unique pens, pencils and notebooks to pencil casesthat will make study fun, and more. We've got "fude pens" that let you write as if you were using a Chinese writing brush, cool erasers that are the best you can find anywhere in the world. We've also got study aids that can help you improve in any subject, such as Japanese flashcard blanks (quiz yourself to learn more), and the very cool Zebra Check Set, which lets you highlight information with a special pen then "magically" make it disappear with a red overlay while you test yourself on the answers.

My son is a meticulous little guy, and when he decided that he was going to take a picture of lightning (which flashed constantly while we were there), nothing could disuade him.

The sunset was really beautiful there.

This little guy strung us along for all kinds of food. When he went into the canyon, my son dove after him, as in, dove over the wall part, with only a little embankment from keeping him from going all the way over.

For the record, Americans get Japanese wrong too. They meant 検定 not 限定 on this sign.

The subject of English lyrics in Japanese songs, the drama of "juken hell," and useless trivia for you

First, the J-List site went down for a couple hours on Tuesday night, U.S. time, due to a server hiccup, but all is well now. Very sorry if you were trying to check out our site during this period!

One subject that's always fascinated me has been the tendency of Japanese singers to mix English lyrics in with Japanese music. When listening to a popular Japanese song, including many from anime, it's quite common to hear a stream of apparently meaningless words or phrases, like "stay! stay! stay!" or "get chance and luck!" or "nice to meet you, good to see you!" or "un du trois!" (the latter is not even English, but no one here notices that). The words seem quite random and whimsical, but if you translate the surrounding Japanese lyrics, the meaning usually meshes together into some larger gestalt. The trend towards putting English in songs supposedly started with famous singer Yumi Matsutoya, who grew up near Yokota Base, one of the major U.S. military bases near Tokyo, and was fluent in English since childhood. During the 1970s, "Yuming" scored with many hit songs that mixed English with Japanese lyrics, such as "You don't have to worry, worry, [I will protect you]," and the face of pop music in Japan has never been the same since. I believe the reason "decorating" songs with English words has proved so popular is tied to the emotional link that Japanese feel to the language. Since most every Japanese person has to study English for six years, or ten if they go to college, making use of phrases like "body feels exit!" or "I do my homework!" allows songwriters to push emotional buttons that wouldn't be accessible with Japanese lyrics, even if the meaning is lost in translation.

Although Spike TV's English-dubbed version of Hey! Spring of Trivia didn't seem to get much traction with U.S. viewers, it's still one of our favorite shows here in Japan. Here are some useless bits of Japanese trivia that aired on the show in recent months. In Osaka there's a batting center with a Hello Kitty pitching machine in which "Kitty-chan" pitches balls at batters. The word "boycott" comes from a person's name, Charles Boycott, an Irish landlord who was "boycotted" by the residents of his town over a land dispute. Flamingos are pink because they're fed special food containing shrimp meal to make them that color. Edison proposed to his second wife in Morse code. In 1948, Nagoya's baseball team the Dragons issued new uniforms with the name misspelled as "Doragons." Oh, and papaya seeds taste like wasabi when you bite down on them.

Each country is different, and the kinds of subjects that make good drama or comedy on television are probably just as unique. In Japan, one popular vehicle for depicting human drama is "juken hell," the period from summer to the following February when students in their third year of high school must study day and night if they have a hope of getting into their university of choice. Passing this test is the defining moment in the lives of Japanese students up to that point, and success means achieving your life's goals, while failure means a clouded future. One of my formative anime series was Kimagure Orange Road, a story about a love triangle between two girls, Hikaru and Ayukawa, and a guy, Kyosuke, who happens to be an esper with super powers that he can't let anyone find out about. The movie that resolves the long-running love triangle is set against the backdrop of Kyosuke and Ayukawa preparing for their all-important college exams, which adds an extra dimension of crisis to the story, since much more than just the feelings of the three people is at risk. There's one scene that I like because it's so uniquely Japanese, where a teacher yells at Kyosuke, "You in the back! Don't you know you're supposed to resolve all your problems d'amour by the second year of high school?" High school seniors in Japan are much too busy to worry about things like falling in love.

J-List is hiring! We've got a full-time position in our San Diego office for a motivated individual with skills and experience in the areas of marketing and managing wholesale accounts. Knowledge of the U.S. anime industry is a plus. For more information on the job opening, see this link. (While we usually only consider people already in the San Diego area, we are open to people who would be relocating from another part of the U.S., depending on your skills and experience in the anime industry.)

Here are today's "really cool products" that I thought were especially noteworthy. Note: the J-List links below may be for adult products and should probably be considered "not safe for work." To see all the J-List products, check out J-List or the JBOX.com updated products link.

The custom of gift-giving in Japan, the problem of Japanese forgetting kanji, and my kids' approach to bilingualism

One complex subject in Japan is that of gift giving. The Japanese are very much into exchanging gifts, and the goodwill that it creates provides a valuable social "lubrication" that makes all manner or personal and business relationships work more smoothly. In July and December there are two gift-giving seasons, when people will give gifts to thank teachers or others in the community to thank them for their past assistance. Predictably, these specially made gift boxes containing anything from coffee to cooking oil to laundry detergent are often passed on to others, with some gifts changing hands many times before they're actually used. This tradition of giving gifts exists in the business world too -- employees give gifts to their bosses right before bonus time, and companies exchange gifts too, thanking each other for their business. (This year we gave V-8 style canned vegetable juice to companies we have relationships with in Japan.) Incidentally, if you ever come to Japan, it's probably a good idea to bring some items to give out as gifts to people you might encounter here -- something representative of wherever you're from, or even a carton of cigarettes from your home country, always a popular item. (The smoking staff of J-List says that Newport Menthols are a good brand, since they're not sold here.)

There are four writing systems used in Japanese: hiragana and katakana, two syllable-based systems used to express Japanese and foreign words, respectively; the Roman alphabet, the "unofficial" writing system that everyone needs in order to function in society; and kanji, the complex ideographs imported from China through Korea in the 6th century A.D. You need to be able to read around 2000 kanji to be considered literate in Japan (not as bad as it sounds), and the government maintains a list of official "general use kanji" (常用漢字) that are used in books, newspapers, etc. One problem the Japanese are grappling with now is a sharp reduction in the ability to write kanji in the younger generations, because of devices like computers and "keitai" (portable) phones bring up the correct kanji for you automatically. As email and other forms of 21st Century-style communication change the daily lives of Japanese, the number of people who are unable to write kanji well is going up.

I'm writing this at Narita Airport right now, as my wife and I wait for our kids to arrive from the U.S. Our kids are quite interesting in how they handle speaking English and Japanese, and I've always loved observing their bilingual language growth. My daughter, who is very "going my way" (as the Japanese say, meaning that does things her own way), switches from Japanese to English mode almost the moment she arrives in the U.S., never letting something like not knowing what a certain word means get in the way of communication. She's extremely sociable in both languages, and makes friends with kids she's just met, something that's quite rare in Japan. My son is much more cautious in his approach to English, and if he's not sure of the correct usage of a certain vocabulary word or grammar point, he will usually choose to say nothing, which makes people assume he can't speak English even though he reads English at one grade above his current level. The lesson is clear: fear of making a mistake is the bane of the language learners, and it's far better to say the wrong thing than nothing.

Remember that J-List has posted the first of our incredible onslaught of 2007 Japanese calendars, a near-the-end-of-the-year tradition here going back to the very beginning a decade ago. We've got dozens of fantastic large-format calendars that are sold exclusively in the Japanese market on the site for you, with even more great calendars posted today, including views of Mt. Fuji, calendars that look like traditional kakejiku scrolls, beautiful women in kimonos, traditional Japanese rooms, fantastic art calendars by artists like Ichiro Tsuruta, and more. Our calendars make great gifts, too, for yourself or anyone else. Browse our selection now!

Challenges of international marriage, housing issues in Japan, and all about Japanese bread (pan)

My wife and I face various daily challenges because of our kokusai kekkon, or international marriage. As an American I can never get completely comfortable with natto, the fermented soybeans she loves so much; and she'll always be frustrated by my inability to perform mugon ryokai, the "wordless communication" that somehow allows Japanese to send unspoken social signals to each other through the air. Our kids, however, are both American and Japanese, and they each have two passports to prove it. When a child is born to U.S. citizens living in Japan, they get automatic dual citizenship until they turn 20, allowing them to carry both Japanese and U.S. passports. Incidentally, I've lived in Japan for almost fifteen years and have permanent resident status, essentially a "green card" to live in Japan. I of course have the option of becoming a naturalized Japanese citizen, something that many "lifer" expats opt to do, but somehow the world seems a little more fun with me in it as an American rather than a Japanese.

One big area where Japan and the U.S. are different is housing. Houses are nearly always designed and built from scratch by construction companies, rather than made in blocks of similarly-designed homes as is usually the case in places like California. Land is never very plentiful in Japan, especially in areas where people would actually want to live, and partially because of this people tend to develop an attachment to land rather than their home. Since "used" houses don't have resale value like they do in the rest of the world, it's quite common for Japanese to tear their houses down and have new ones built every 15-20 years. Although the Japanese are fluent in the metric system, they always measure homes in tsubo, a unit of measurement that's equal to two tatami mats, or approximately 3.3 square meters, and prices for home construction are usually expressed "per tsubo" (with the average being around $2500 per tsubo to build a house). Home construction is a huge business in Japan, and every day you can see commercials from established companies trying to make you want to trade in your ratty old home for a fresh, new one built by them. Some companies show elephants standing on the second floor of their houses to show how sturdy they are, or hire famous stars like Ichiro Suzuki to promote their companies. Some companies you may have heard of are involved in home construction in Japan, including Toyota Home (Toyota) and PanaHome (Panasonic).

Although rice is the famous staple food of Japan, eaten with almost every meal, the Japanese are no slouches when it comes to bread. Called pan in Japanese, from the Portuguese who introduced it to Japan, the are dozens of varieties of bread here, available from national bakery companies as well as smaller bakeries that deliver fresh-baked right to shoppers. Often what the Japanese call "bread" would qualify as a doughnut to most of us, such as the famous Anpan, round bread with different types of Japanese sweet beans inside, or Melon Pan, essentially a large piece of sweetened bread that looks like a honeydew melon cut in half -- or like a brain, which is why Japanese say eating it will make you smart. One of my favorite types of Japanese pan is Curry Pan, fried bread with spicy curry inside, yum. They have "regular" bread in Japan, too, of course, and there's one benefit over U.S. supermarket-fare: you can buy a loaf of bread with 8, 6 or 4 slices (I recommend the latter if you like really thick French Toast). If you're a fan of Re-Ment, the company that makes incredibly detailed miniatures of food and other products, check out the new Homemade Bakery series we've just posted!

We've been tweaking our new search feature, which provides more accurate, weighted search results, and we've added some new functionality, including the ability to search for specific strings by putting quotes around the search term (entering "loose socks" with quotes searches for this exact string), and omit results (loose socks -glue, which will show all results containing "loose socks" but not the word "glue"). Incidentally, the new search system broke our "top 5" pages that indicate the most popular products on the site, but we've gotten it fixed and back on the main pages of J-List and JBOX.com.

Announcing the start of 2007 Calendar Season! Every year about this time, J-List starts taking preorders for the outstanding calendars from Japan, which are printed exclusively for the Japanese market. The calendars we sell every year come in two volleys: first, we post dozens of amazing calendars that capture the natural beauty of Japan; the delicate imagery of a tea garden; the aesthetic beauty of Japanese sushi or bento; kanji calendars for students; gorgeous bikini idols like Aki Hoshino; and fantastic other calendars like the best-selling "Onsen Girls." Most of the JPOP and anime calendars will be posted in a couple weeks. Please browse the amazing calendars we've got on the site for you now!

Each month, J-List offers a "PC dating-sim game of the month," allowing you to explore this amazing genre of entertainment from Japan at a special price. This month's game is Target: Pheromone, a great title from Trabulance in which you must help a witch from another dimension get home, which you do by collecting female, er, pheromones. A fun interactive game with a story that you control. Buy it as a shrinkwrapped package or download (the download is just $19.95).

My wife's new respect for Johnny Depp, 15 minutes of fame for Baby Gorilla and Pyupa, and High School Baseball in Japan

Something odd happened while I was in the States: my wife decided that Johnny Depp was the neatest thing since pre-molded sushi. She didn't come to that conclusion by watching his many films, which are of course entertaining, but because of an interview he gave to two fifth-grade students from my son's school, which teaches the standard Japanese curriculum but with most classes in English rather than Japanese. Since the experimental school started, it's gotten quite a lot of attention from the mass-komi (the Japanese media, from the English word "mass communications"), and over the summer they were visited by members of V6, one of the more interesting Japanese pop singer groups from the Johnny's Entertainment talent agency. After trying and failing to follow some of the classes in English, the V6 guys chose two students -- whose nicknames were Baby Gorilla and Pyupa, don't ask me why -- for a special task: they would interview Johnny Depp in English and try to make the usually serious actor burst out laughing.

As the Japan release date for Pirates 2 approached, Mr. Depp came to Japan to promote the film. Like many a Hollywood star before him, he was accompanied by Natsuko Toda, the famous movie subtitle translator who is so in demand that her personal schedule can affect the worldwide release dates of major films. (Her unfamiliarity with Tolkien caused much rending of garments by fans when she messed up the subtitles for the Lord of the Rings films.) When the time came for the sit-down interview, the kids asked various questions, then put on a show employing various gags about pirates with smelly socks in their treasure chests. They got their laugh, and Mr. Depp told them that was the best interview he'd ever done, which thrilled the kids no end. While my wife was a little disappointed that our son wasn't chosen for the interview -- he's way too shy, and has an unfair advantage over the other kids when it comes to speaking English -- she was impressed by the actor's kindness with the boys. It was an experience Baby Gorilla and Pyupa will never forget.

(Oh my! It's already on YouTube. Click here to see the interview.)

There are many popular sports in Japan, including pro baseball, soccer, judo, volleyball, and the official national sport of the country, sumo wrestling. But for millions of Japanese sports fans the most thrilling game on TV is high school baseball. Every August, teams from each of Japan's 47 prefectures fight for the right to go to the national baseball championships held at the legendary Koshien (koh-SHE-en) Stadium near Osaka, Japan's oldest baseball stadium, dating back to 1924. To go to Koshien is the dream of every young ball player, and it has a positive effect on the future careers of thousands of young men every year, whether they go on to play professionally or not. All games are televised and get huge ratings as baseball fans, especially middle-aged men reliving their youth, closely follow all the action. This year our prefecture of Gunma is represented by Kiryu First High School, but they got eliminated early on (oh well). (Of course, any discussion of Koshien should involve Touch, the best manga and anime on the subject. Here's a link for you to check out if you want to know more about this show, which has done so much for me over the years.)

Everyone loves the DVD movie format, but we don't love Hollywood confusing things with their region code system. America and Canada are region 1, but imported films from Japan and Europe are often zoned for region 2, meaning to watch these films you'll need a special player. Happily, J-List carries excellent region-free players that are great for any use. We're happy to announce a new addition to our DVD player lineup, the RJ800 from Rjtech, a sleek DVD player that will handle any discs you want to throw at it, including PAL discs, discs from any region, DVD-R/RW media and more. This player is extra cool because it also plays all versions of DIVX/MP4/AVI, allowing you to burn your favorite movies onto DVD-R media and watch them on the big screen. In addition to this great new player, we've lowered prices on all our other players, including our top of the line DVD7050 (also DIVX capable) and the outstanding portable M280 (complete with battery and 7 inch screen).

J-List strives to bring you cool things from Japan every day. One category of product we love are the pre-painted anime figures that are so fun to display, perfect 3-D versions of Japan's amazing anime style, and already painted and ready to show off. Today we've got one of my all-time favorite series, the Mecha Musume line from Fumikane Shimada, which joins incredibly cute "bishoujo" female characters with World War II mechs, including RAF planes, Wiermacht tanks, you name it. Full sets in stock!

Nice to be back in Japan. Oh look, what does that sign say?

Oh, black currant and vinegar juice! I must be back in Japan!

This is a "regular" drink cup in Japan, for what it's worth. In this case it held "soft cream" (soft serve ice cream), which I love to eat when I get off the plane and into hot Japan.

I was surprised to find corn flakes in my cup. It was a pleasant twist on my ice cream.

Next up...Peter goes to Washington!

August and Yasukuni Shrine, a very Buddhist holiday, and small drinks and Japanese girls' butts

Well, I've made my little hop across the Pacific, and am once again in hot, humid, kawaii Japan. When people hear that the flight to Japan is around ten hours they usually offer me their condolences, but I don't mind it at all: it's much better than flying inside the U.S. at least, with extra-cramped seats, $5 drinks and multiple connections to your destination. In this wonderful age of MacBooks and iPods that we live in, there's always plenty to do to amuse yourself inside the plane. Now that I've been back for twenty-four hours, have gotten through my "shocked at the smallness of the drinks and of the buttocks on Japanese woman walking in front of me" culture shock phase, and have gotten up at 5 am thanks to jet lag, I'm ready for a J-List update.

Besides being hot as hell, August is a solemn month in Japan. In addition to the anniversaries of the two atomic bombings, August 15 marks Japan's official defeat in World War II, and like every August in recent years, the issue of Yasukuni Shrine is in the news. Will Prime Minister Koizumi make an official visit, or won't he? How will China and Korea react? It's really a sticky wicket for Japan: there is no Arlington National Cemetery, no Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, no place that citizens to pay respects those who died for their country other than Yasukuni Shrine, a beautiful traditional Shinto shrine located in Tokyo. Since the ashes of fourteen Class-A war criminals including Hideki Tojo are interred at the shrine, there's always controversy when the Prime Minister makes a visit. The situation seems not unlike the occasional uproar over the Confederate flag flying over state capitals in the American South (to put it in some kind of context), and there's plenty of pride and history on both sides, making it a difficult problem to solve. Except for a very tiny portion of the country that drives around in trucks blasting right-wing World War II songs and making fools of themselves, I've never known the Japanese to defend anything they did during World War II, or say it was okay at all. It's true that South Korea and China both use the Yasukuni visits partially for political reasons, since calling attention to the mote in Japan's eye diverts it from the beams in their own. It's a shame there can't be more understanding on both sides, and less politics.

August is also time for one of the major Japanese Buddhist holidays, Obon, essentially a three-day holiday during which the souls of the dead are thought to come home for a visit. Obon is a time when Japanese head to their "real home" (the house where their family's Buddhist altar is located, usually their parents' home), spend time with everyone, and do haka-mairi, visiting the graves of dead family members to say hello, leave flowers, wash dirt off the gravestones, and so on. Japanese Buddhism, more than Buddhism practiced in other countries, is all about remembering your ancestors, since (as my wife has told me passionately), "without your ancestors, you wouldn't be here at all." Obon season is also a time for festivals, including a famous style of dance Bon-odori (as seen in Karate Kid II, if you'll forgive the reference). Since millions of city-dwellers take advantage of the Obon holidays to return home, cities like Tokyo are transformed into relative ghost towns during this season.

Understanding Japan through job resumes, reflections on the word "otaku" and Obi-Wan on our "point of view"

One way to compare Japan's more structured society with the U.S. and Europe is to look at the standardized Japanese resume form, called rirekisho (ree- REK-sho, "employment history form"). When you want to apply for a job in Japan, be it for a truck driver or sushi chef or computer programmer, you drop by a stationery store, pick up one of these standardized forms and fill it out by hand. Virtually everything that's important about you is recorded on the form: name, address, past school and career history, what special certificates or qualifications you've got, and so on. There's also a place to affix a photo so potential employers can see what you look like, always in the same place on every form. Some information isn't recorded, of course, like blood type, since employers might have biases about people of a certain blood type. The form is very different from the open-ended way job resumes are prepared in the U.S., usually a single sheet that succinctly describes a person's school and work history and career goals. Unlike the Japanese resume form, there's no set format for a resume in the States, and there are thousands of variables that could affect how yours might look. Plain font or fancy? Colored paper? Traditional layout or something more eye-catching? What level of information to include? It can boggle the mind, and I'm sure that Japanese who have to write English resumes for any reason have lots of trouble knowing where to start.

Obi-Wan was right: much of the way we view the world depends greatly on our own point of view, and how you look at a complex country like Japan is the same. You can approach Japan from many angles, learning about the country through martial arts, Zen Buddhism, toy culture, JPOP and JROCK, origami, Japanese TV dramas, and so on. Like many in the current generation, I got interested in Japan through anime, drawn in by the dramatic stories that saw actual resolution, and characters who actually died. When I started studying Japanese, I knew I needed input in the language, so I began reading manga like the Rumiko Takahashi classic Maison Ikkoku, the story of a poor college student's long efforts to woo the widow who runs his apartment. Studying Japanese through manga is especially good, since almost everything is spoken dialogue that can be digested and used as-is. I also embraced karaoke as a way to approach the contry, going to Japanese restaurants in San Diego and memorizing the songs and the kanji that displayed on the screen. The many fascinating aspects of Japan are like bridges over the sea, allowing us to walk right up and say hello.

At Otakon I talked on several panels, including one on "trends in otaku culture in Japan," where I got a lot of questions about the word otaku itself. Although it's come to equal "anime fan" or "anime geek" here in the West and serve as a badge of honor for those who revere Japanese popular culture, the word otaku is originally a polite word meaning "you" or "your family." It's kind of a "housewife word," with the most common usage being between housewives in the neighborhood. Urayamashii ne, otaku no ko wa mainichi benkyo, one might say to another, meaning "I really envy you, your son studies everyday." (Japanese are into praising each other's kids while putting their own kids down in front of others, it's a humility thing.) The word became used to refer to people who obsessed over anime in the 1990s when Gainax release their classic Otaku no Video, which documents one character's slide from "normalcy" into otakuhood. More than any other animation company, Gainax has helped create a self-aware "otaku" generation (and we thank them for it).

J-List has a great line of wacky Japanese T-shirts, which present funny or aesthetically beautiful kanji shirt designs for you. We've got dozens of shirts for guys and girls, as well as great hoodies for the cooler months, in stock for you, all printed here in San Diego by our dedicated staff. We're always closing out designs to make room for others, so if you like the look of one of our shirts, you might want to get before the design is cycled out in favor of new ideas. We've recently reduced the price of some of our close-out shirts, including a cool shirt that teaches you some Japanese words and culture. Why not browse our great T-shirts today?

Some more pictures from the show. I was hanging out in Artist Alley a lot, snapping picturs and handing out our world-famous J-List tissues.

Now this guy has had a great idea!

Another nice costume...

This wounded Gundam holds and sign that says, "Will shoot Zakus for anime."

I'm so glad I'm a father. I know I wouldn't be able to enjoy the Harry Potter books as much if it weren't for being able to read the books through my kids' eyes.

Wow, old school. Hey, were these guys even born when Speed Racer was on the air?

Someone was distributing deodorant to random fans, and one girl gave this to me. I was mildly offended.

All too true, all too true...

This was taken before the show, when we were on our way back from a trip to Virginia. You gotta love their moxy.

More reflections on "freedom" and how it relates to James Dean, my trip to the Moon, and Japanese "standing nails"

Well, Otakon has passed and we're safely back in San Diego, our long, multi-stage vacation across America finally over. After finishing up at the convention, we spent Sunday in D.C. so that my son could see the many amazing sights there. We started with the Capital and walked all the way to the Lincoln Memorial ("the place from Planet of the Apes"), taking in various monuments along the way. One of the challenges of raising a child who's both American and Japanese is exposing him to the cultural knowledge Americans take for granted, George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and all that. I had my work cut out for me, explaining the history of the nation mainly through the presidents that appear on the U.S. currency and trying to impress upon him why archaic language like "four score and seven years ago" is important We capped off our day at one of my favorite places in the world, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, took in the great aeronautical achievements of the past century, went to the moon courtesy of IMAX, and did the requisite touching of the moon rock. It was a great memory.

I talked last time about what the idea of "freedom" might mean to the Japanese, at least the students I taught English to. In general Japan is what's known as heiwa-boke (hay-WAH BOH-kay), roughly meaning "going soft in the head from too much peace." Japan has spent the last six decades completely free of war, with the exception of peacekeeping efforts in Cambodia and now Iraq. I grew up with ideas from the American Revolution like "the tree of liberty, from time to time, must be replenished with the blood of patriots and tyrants" (Jefferson), but Kim Jung-il notwithstanding, Japan has very little in the way of external threats to its liberty that would make people think about what "freedom" might mean in the larger, philosophical sense. So "freedom" comes to mean the freedom to do the things they're not allowed to do in Japan, like wear the clothes they want to school (almost all junior high and high schools have required uniforms), the freedom to drive or work a part-time job (forbidden for students), freedom to listen to rockabilly music, or freedom to imitate your heroes on Hollywood. I definitely feel lucky as an American to have a better idea of what "freedom" should really mean.

I'm always interested in Japanese who recognize the limitations of Japan's more structured society and find ways around them. One person I knew had finally gotten into Aoyama University in Tokyo, a prestigious private school, after years of preparation and study. Once in the school, he found...nothing that interested him. It's common for Japanese university students to study very hard to pass a school's entrance exam, then play around for four years while they wait to graduate, and that's what he saw happening. So he dropped out -- how scandalous! -- and restarted his university career in Oregon, enjoying a much broader education in the U.S. and perfecting his English in the process. America is very much an open plain, with little in the way of established social grooves that people feel they must move through, as in Japan, and this suited my friend very well. One of the famous sayings in Japan is deru kui wa utareru, or "the standing nail will be hammered down," meaning that people who stick out will usually be brought into line with social norms in the end. If you were to make a list of Japanese who have done really outstanding things over the past century, I'm sure you'd see that most or all of them were very much "standing nails." I'm sure my friend will do great things in the future.

We're rolling out the first of our new improvements to the J-List website, a new search feature that includes weighted search results that should be more accurate. We're still working on the system, so if you have any feedback, please pass it along to us. Look for more improvements to J-List in the coming weeks and months!

Do you have a website? Do you like J-List's style? If so we hope you'll consider the Friends of J-List, our little program that makes it worth your while to link to J-List or JBOX.com. You have complete control over what products or categories you link to, and can check all stats in real-time. For more information, check out our info page.

Neo and Smith and one of our T-shirts in the background there.

Speaking of our shirts, they were there, even though J-List wasn't represented officially at any booth.

Cosplayers from Animamundi, wow.

Ulp, $5 for ramune? That's ridiculous in the extreme.

Observations on America as a "free" country, what that means to the Japanese, and questions about Burger King and Dairy Queen

My son and I continue to enjoy our mini-vacation here in Baltimore, and it's been fun to watch his reactions to various things here. We went swimming the other day to try and get away from the heat (ha!), and one of his observations was that America is more "free" than Japan -- fewer rules to follow resulting in more fun, from his 11-year-old point of view. When you go swimming in Japan, there are plenty of rules to follow -- everyone must wear a swimming cap and must shower for 2-3 minutes before going in, no one may dive or even jump in from the poolside for any reason, parents must keep within an arm's reach of children until they're a certain height no matter how well they can swim, and of course kids may not horse around by seeing how high they can jump off Dad's shoulders into the pool. But we had a great time swimming here, and even tried our hand at the high dive, a very rare thing in Japan, a country where all the pools contain uniformly shallow water for maximum safety for swimmers. (Another random observation my son made to me: if Burger King married Dairy Queen, would their child would be Jack in the Box?)

The idea that America is more "free" than Japan is one I've encountered quite often during my ESL teaching days. Japanese students, tired of Japan's stricter, more structured society, often pine for life in America, which is "free" and therefore good. In what way is America freer than Japan, I would ask, always eager to teach a lesson on a subject that interests my students rather than working from an ESL text. In America, there are fewer rules and more personal freedom, the answer would come back. No uniforms in junior high and high school. Most Americans start driving at age 16, not 18 as in Japan, and young people don't have to pony up $3000 or more for a month-long driving school to get their license. In American there's less pressure to fit into neat little holes the society has prepared for you. No doubt the image of America being "free" was helped along by Harley Davidson slogans and Jack Daniels marketing campaigns, so it's hard to tell which perceptions are real and which are imagined, but it was always interesting debating what "freedom" meant to to the Japanese.

A "yankee" can be many things. To someone from the American South, the word refers to someone from the North, or maybe any American not from the South -- is that a hint of Japan-style in-group/out-group labeling I detect? If you're traveling abroad, you're a "yank" even if you hail from Alabama or Georgia. But in Japan, the word yankee (perhaps more accurately written yankii to keep the concepts separate) refers to a "bad kid," a street punk like the biker gang in the anime film Akira. Also called furyo" (lit. "not good) or boso-zoku (meaning "violent tribe"), the term yankii no doubt comes from the penchant these misguided youths have for dying their hair blonde, or at least orange-blonde, which is what color it usually ends up as. It's considered quite normal for a Japanese young man to go through a phase where he rebels against society, and this is sometimes expressed as dressing tough and acting like he came out of a 1950's drive-in flick. It's embarrassing to say it, but the whole yankii thing can be traced sociologically to James Dean's famous film Rebel Without a Cause, just as the seed for all "magical girl" anime from Minky Momo to Sailor Moon can be traced to the popularity of Bewitched when it showed on Japanese TV. It's funny how everything in the world influences everything else...no country is an island, not even an island like Japan.

This month's "Game of the Month" is Target: Pheromone, a wacky 2-disc release from G-Collections. Silk is a witch who needs to return to her own dimension, and she needs your help. You must collect female pheromones for her to make her magic work, and to do this she puts all the women around you under your spell. Can you help Silk get home? A great game from Japanese publisher Trabulance. Special pricing on this outstanding game, this month only!

Remember that J-List carries dozens of amazing Domo-kun products for you, more than any other company in the world, we're pretty sure. Domo-kun is the ultra-cute spokesmonster for the "BS" (broadcast satellite) TV network operated by NHK, the BBC of Japan, and he's as cute a monster as you could ever hope to see. We're proud to bring you an incredible selection of Domo-kun products, with plush toys (including the giant huggable Domo-kun, the largest ever sold), Domo-kun straps for your phone, and a favorite of mine, the Domo-kun business card holder. Note that these items are very rare and are starting to disappear (already one of my favorite items, the Domo-kun business card holder, is out of stock for good, sob).

Things Japanese don't expect gaijin to be able to do, learning proverbs in Japanese, and reflections on my childhood

There are several methods of learning a foreign language, including grammar-translation (learning grammar and example sentences), Total Physical Response ("Simon Says" type activities), the Natural Approach (mimicking how children learn), and so on. Added to this is the always-fun "do anything that gets you attention" approach, which I've named the Social Feedback Method since it sounds better. Looking back over my years of studying Japanese, I can see that I've enjoyed surprising my Japanese hosts by doing things they didn't expect a foreigner to do. Japanese are used to gaijin not being able to eat some of their more unique culinary dishes, but with very few exceptions -- fermented soybeans (natto) and pickled fish guts (shio-kara) -- I have surprised them by eating everything, including the time I was served whole baby octopus. I learned to sing enka, the traditional music of Japan, at karaoke, and I go out of my way to count pairs of chopsticks with the proper counter of zen (ichizen, nizen, sanzen), rather than the more common counter hon (ippon, nihon, sanbon). In my heyday I was even able to write a few esoteric kanji that my Japanese wife couldn't write, although use of computers has killed much of that. I guess part of my motivation was the look of surprise Japanese people wore when I did something they didn't think foreigners were capable of.

One thing they certainly don't expect is for foreigners to be familiar with kotowaza, or proverbs, observations on life that are quite common in the language, and used by people of all ages. Although they can be difficult to learn since they often use old or archaic grammar (think Shakespere), pulling one out at the right moment can bring a look of astonishment to the face of a Japanese person that's pure gold. Saru mo ki kara ochiru (even monkeys fall from trees) means that even an expert will make a mistake sometimes. Ame futte ji katamaru (rain falls, the ground hardens) means that difficult trials will build character in the end, and yes, that is the verb form of katamari from the game Katamari Damacy. Nana korobi, ya-oki (if you fall down seven times, get up an eighth) means that you should never give up trying to attain your goals if you want to reach them -- always come back swinging. Another good one is ishi no ue nimo san-nen (sit on a rock for three years), which means that you should try something for a reasonable amount of time (three years) before deciding whether or not you really like it.

The current heat wave aside, my son and I are having a great time in the Baltimore area. Today we hit all the places I roamed as a kid. There was plenty that was different, including a Costco in the middle of a field in Gaithersburg that I used to play in, and they even filled in the lake where I used to go spelunking (used in the Calvin & Hobbes sense, i.e. throwing rocks in the water to enjoy the "spelunk" sound). Much of my childhood was spent growing up playing in construction sites of new homes as they were being built, but now that the area is thoroughly developed, there are no more construction sites anywhere -- where will the kids of today play? Although there were many changes, some things were the same -- the drug store in Reston still sells real ice cream shakes, which were delicious (they don't sell Marathon bars anymore, though). We had an extra nice treat since the Seattle Mariners are in town, so I took my son to see a ball game with Japanese players Ichiro and Johjima live and up close.

Jumping around a bit, I'll finish the Grand Canyon pics later. This was our trip to the Orioles - Mariners game, yesterday. First of all, congrats to Baltimore for making a beautiful stadium, it was fun to watch a baseball game there.

It was West Point Night apparently, with midshipmen from the Naval Academy present in huge numbers. It was great for my son to see this, since he's not really seen the U.S. military, being raised mostly in rural Japan. He is very intersted in music so it was great to be able to see the instruments that the band played up close.

The O's got in the lead right away, and we were sure we were going to lose. Ichiro, who is supposedly a star, did absolutel nothing during the whole game.

My family has a tradition of yelling ii kao shite (lit. "make a good face") at Japanese baseball players (we once did this to Nomo and he gave us the funniest look), but for some reason when I yelled this at Ichiro my son got embarrassed and told me to shut up.

Ichiro's kouhai Johjima, who I'd not known that much about, really kicked butt during the game.

This ball was kind enough to drop near us during the game. Wanting to get it for my son, I dove for it with the urgency that surprised even myself. The stupid lady ahead of us ended up picking up the ball...

...and I ended up with massively scraped knees and wonderful oozing blood. Oh well, I can tell people I wiped my bike and see if they believe me.

Thoughts on raising kids bilingual, the origin of the name "Atari" and Our RV Trip

Well, our RV trip to the Grand Canyon is finally over. We had great fun and the kids were amazed at the grandeur of the place, and I was happy to be able to show them a beautiful part of the USA. Now I'm headed "Back East" to Maryland with my son. We're going to visit family and check out the places where I grew up as a boy (including the Kay Bee Toy Store where I bought my very first Star Wars figure, if it's still there). We'll also duck into Otakon (Aug 4-6) in Baltimore and check out the show -- I'll be on some panels related to bishoujo games on Saturday if you're there and want to come by to say hi. For information on Otakon, see http://www.otakon.org.

My wife and I want to raise our kids to be bilingual, but it can be difficult sometimes. Since we live in Japan, my kids are naturally much stronger in Japanese than in English, which is why we bring them to the U.S. every summer so they can get a good dose of American culture. We learned early on that if my wife or I are around, my kids will find excuses to speak Japanese, and nothing we can do can force them to use English. The best way we've found to manage this is to put them in a "sink or swim" situation where they have to use English if they're going to survive, and we've found summer camps to be a great way to make this happen. Every summer we choose several summer camps to send the kids to, which forces them use English and make friends with other kids. Today we dropped my daughter off at Raw Hide Ranch camp here in San Diego, a fun place where kids ride horses and play cowboy or cowgirl for a week (which I highly recommend, if you're looking for a summer camp in the area for next year). For most people a summer camp is a great experience for their kids, and a peaceful week for parents, but for us it's actually an incredibly beneficial tool for making our kids acculaturate to the U.S. and feel like "Americans."

It's funny, the things you discover when you start studying a language like Japanese. The first computer I ever owned was an Atari 400, those cool 8-bit machines from the early days of home computing. The word atari (pronounced with all syllables stress the same, e.g. ah-tah-ree, not ah-TAH-ree) is a Japanese word that literally means "to hit" and it's used in the context of hitting a target or meeting a goal. It also means to get the right answer, and on game shows the host may shout "Atari!" when a contestant guesses correctly. (Alternately, he might should "ping pong!" which happens to simulate the sound of a "that is correct" bell to the Japanese ear.) When former childhood idol of mine Nolan Bushnell founded Atari in 1972, giving your company a Japanese name when it wasn't Japanese must have been quite "edge." Looking at the kanji for the word (see it on the J-List main page), you can even see that they drew a lot of the inspiration for the Atari logo from the design of the character.

JAST USA is sponsoring the first "H-Game Webcomic" entitled "HH" over at JAST USA, a hilarious web-based comic that will parody the themes found in bishoujo games, featuring characters from games by G-Collections, Peach Princess and more. Come on by and check it out! We plan to update the comic every Sunday.

This is the RV we went to Arizona in. Two adults and four kids, it was certainly cozy inside.

It was 1100 miles, there and back, not that far as far as trips go (not as bad as, say, our annual trip to Dallas for A-Kon), but far, nevertheless.

Of course, gas sucked big times, although since gas prices are always way high in San Diego (usually $3.50, although today I found gas for $3.21) we were often happy to find chaper gas.

As a long-time Peanuts fan, I've *always* wanted to go to Needles to see if they had a statue of Snoopy's brother Spike, the only brother who I consider 'canon' since he's been around since the 1970s at least (Belle can live too, but Olaf, Marbles, and Andy have to die). There was no such statue to be found. Now I need to go to Petaluma. ("Petaluma?")

The kids were having fun in the back, although trying to get 4 kids to sit still in a vehicle for that long is a feat.

Culture shock related to cars, subtleties of language, and all about Japanese pocket tissue

When I first got to Japan, I had plenty of culture shock related to auto- mobiles. Cars are very important to the Japanese, and in all cities except for the largest ones, a car is really required to get anything done, just as in the States. Auto theft is quite uncommon in Japan, so it's not at all rare to see someone leave his beautiful Nissan Fairlady Z parked in front of the combini (convenience store) with the engine running. The idea that his car might be stolen just doesn't enter into the thinking here, so it's perfectly safe. Japanese cars have the steering wheel on the right side, as in England and Australia, and the Japanese have perfected the art of starting the car without getting in it, since the ignition is easily accessible on that side of the vehicle. When stopped at a light at night, it's considered good manners to turn your headlights down to "park" so you don't blind the person in front of you, and when someone lets you go ahead of them in traffic, flashing your emergency lights at them once or twice conveys your thanks -- although this is done by polite Tokyo drivers, not Gunma locals, who have bad driving manners. Japanese love their cars, and there are many interesting products that allow drivers to deck their vehicles out, including bizarre and interesting accessories, gaudy air fresheners, and flashing lights that are great for picking up girls.

I've talked before about how languages reflect the personalities of the people who speak them, and vice-versa. English speakers are direct -- usually saying "yes" or "no" rather than speaking in more subtle shades of grey as the Japanese do -- in part because the language is set up that way. Japanese is a very indirect language, with the subject and even the object often omitted from sentences because both the speaker and listener usually know what is being talked about, which at times can be confusing. If character A says they love vanilla ice cream but leaves this word unstated, character B might get confused and think that they themselves are the object of character A's affection, a basis for may misunderstandings in anime. Another vehicle for indirectness is the passive voice, that bane of high school English teachers, used infrequently in English, but quite common in Japanese. If the boss made a bonehead decision that was a bad idea for the company, you might complain about him in English directly, e.g. "The boss upstairs decided that we should contract with a Russian spam company to increase website traffic." In Japanese, where you'd be less likely to take your boss to task in front of others, passive speech would likely be used, to avoid naming the person responsible, e.g. "It's been decided that..."

If you came by our booth at the San Diego Comicon, we probably handed you some Japanese pocket tissue. One of the most popular methods that companies have to advertise their services to consumers, printing pocket tissue with advertising on it is a staple in many industries, including home remodeling companies, banks and the high-interest finance companies that have become so popular since the bursting of Japan's economic bubble. When we looked for a way to tell people about our little Japan-based web shop, we naturally turned to the famous Japanese pocket tissue, since it's universally convenient -- you never know when you're going to need tissue -- and totally Japanese. We give pocket tissue with almost every order, too, in every case where the square shape of the tissue won't damage your order (such as an order of thin magazines, which might be bent by us including a tissue packet inside). So if you want to get some great pocket tissue from Japan, make an order today! (We also have a few types of tissue on the site, such as Domo-kun

J-List genuinely wants to spread interest in Japan in all it's mysterious forms. For those who'd like to learn to read and write Japanese, the starting place is hiragana and katakana, the two basis syllable-based writing systems used in the language. We've got a great new set of study cards that make it easy to learn hiragana and katakana using visual cues, equating a kana character with a picture that helps you memorize it. Check it out now!

Whenever a convention ends, there is the inevitible pack-down that must be done. Here are pictures of the pack-down at Comicon, in case you want to see. This is Chancee, our most excellent employee from San Diego, who sadly, is leaving us to back to her home in Texas.

It's a lot more lonely after all the crowds have gone.

This is the J-List Mobile, our handy F-150 truck with trailer that we bought this year.

The reason we make sure to put our logo on the trailer is, our last trailer got stolen right after we bought it. That really sucked.

Another view of the "accidental" rivet.

The last image you're likely to see on a Comicon advertisement. Well, goodbye, Comicon 2006. We'll see you in 2007.

I sure know how to keep busy. The San Diego Comicon ended just two days ago, but I'm already several hundred miles away, at the Grand Canyon. I'm taking a much-deserved vacation after our hard convention season this year, touring in an RV with my mother and my two kids, who just flew in from Japan. We're having great fun near the South Rim, doing very "American" things like eating hot dogs and beans and making s'mores (and with real graham crackers, too, not saltines like they use in Japan). It's a challenge, keeping the kids entertained in the middle of hot, hot Arizona, but we're having a blast so far...

I've learned something about my own country so far on this trip, at the campgrounds we've been parking our RV at each night: in addition to folks from all corners of the US of A, we've met people from such far-flung places as Germany, Israel and the U.K. It seems that a popular way for foreign visitors to see the "real America" is to rent an RV and hit the road. It's been interesting, talking with people from countries like the Netherlands about what they've seen in this great, wide country, and they're always surprised to meet an American who's an ex-pat in another country. Since people in most other countries pay a lot more for gas than we do in the States, I'm sure the fuel required to drive an RV through the U.S. looks reasonable by comparison.

Most of us know the name Americus Vespucius, the explorer and mapmaker who coined the phrase "New World," and how his name came to be placed on maps representing North and South America. Japan got its current name through a very indirect route. The early name for Japan used by European countries was Cipangu, which and the country was mentioned in the tales of Marco Polo (something the Japanese are no doubt thrilled with, knowing their penchant with making a good impression on Westerners). Eventually this morphed into Zipang, and eventually, the modern Japan in the English language. In Japanese, the name of Japan is either Nihon or Nippon (both are correct). Written in kanji (日本）, the name means "origin of the sun," which is a fairly reasonable name since the sun appears to come from Japan, when seen from China, and they didn't know much about those things back then.

Back in the Edo Period, there were four castes in Japanese society: warrior (samurai), farmer, artisan and merchant, with merchants at the bottom of the rung, despite their actual position of importance as movers of the economy. There seem to be similar castes in Japan today, which might include such groups as salarymen (full-time employees of private companies), providers of skilled services like carpenters, farmers, and Japanese public employees. The latter group, called komuin (KOH-mu-in), are an interesting part of society here, consisting of every national, prefectural or local employee, every fireman, every policeman, every tax collector, and every educator at any level. Postal employees used to fall into the komuin category, but Prime Minister Koizumi has privatized the post office, essentially making it a publicly mandated private organization. Responsible for administering Japanese laws, collecting taxes, granting permits for various activities, issuing marriage licenses and generally making Japan run smoothly, komuin are in theory like public servants in the U.S., and yet quite different. Unlike the private sector, where companies must work hard and show results, Japan's public employees enjoy incredible stability, and theirs is the last segment of society with de facto lifetime employment in Japan. Young people who want the comfort of the stablest possible job and a long, steady climb up the social ladder aspire to pass the difficult tests that allows you to work as a public employee, although of course, if your parents are friends with your local city councilman he may be able to get you a job even if you haven't passed the test -- Japan is nothing if not flexible. While Japan's public employees provide a solid white-collar backbone of stability for the country, there are a lot of complaints about lack of fiscal restraint in Japan's public sector. For example, despite the decade-long recession in Japan, our prefecture found the money to build a 32-story skyscraper-style prefectural office that cost hundreds of millions to erect yet does nothing but provide government employees with a beautiful view. Before starting J-List, I had the opportunity to work as a komuin in my city for a few months, and I learned a lot from the experience (including that I didn't want to have a life that was that stable).

More pics from Comicon. Hey, I've seen that shirt before!

We are always retiring older J-List shirts for new ones, and so we have quite a lot of older shirts. This is one, and this guy wears it proudly as an "old school" J-List fan.

We always get a lot of comments on our banners, which were designed by Naomoto Sakaki or the Borderline series. We get plenty of offers to buy them, although they're not for sale.

This guy was walking around in a Pocky costume.

This girl was so hot, I thought for a moment I was at the AVN show in Las Vegas. She's holding the Domo-kun plush that was such a hit at the show. Bummer that my Treo decided to put an artifact in the picture.

I liked this shirt, too.

And this one, with Space Invaders printed into the shirt.

Isn't this the coolest thing in the world? I love the Clone Wars-style redesigns of the Star Wars characters.

The end of Comicon again, thoughts on math and the abacus, and strategies for communication

It's that time of year again: the crowds have gone home, the D.C. Comics banners have been pulled down, and the giant inflatable Pikachu has been deflated. The San Diego Comicon has come to an end, and we're all so tired, we feel like we've climbed Mt. Fuji. There is nothing like this convention anywhere in the world: a sprawling room that's easily ten times the size of Echo Base on Hoth, filled with all manner of geek culture, and there were well over 100,000 attendees this year. We had a great show, shook a lot of hands and sold a lot of Totoro T-shirts. If you came by to say hi, thanks!

In addition to greeting fans and talking about the wacky things from Japan we carry on the J-List website, I completed a lot of purchases for customers. Two T-shirts here, three packs of Black Black there, and did you want all three of the X-Change games? I had to do a lot of calculation in my head, which can really be challenging, since I'm not very good at doing math on the fly. The general consensus among Japanese I've talked to is that Americans usually aren't very good at math, and in my case this is certainly true. While trying to figure the total for some loose socks and Domo-kun toys I found myself envying my Japanese wife, who always seems able to do complex calculations in her mind with perfect accuracy. Part of the reason she can calculate so quickly is no doubt due to her years learning the soroban, or abacus, a complex system of beads that makes all kinds of addition and multiplication a snap. My wife has the equivalent of a "black belt" with the device, and can actually do calculations on an "air abacus," moving her fingers in mid-air and imagining where the beads would be to get the total. Sadly, it seems that abacus skills are slowly falling by the wayside in the current generation, as fewer and fewer kids are going to the special juku schools to learn how to use an abacus.

Communicating with people from a different country can involve making use of communication strategies to get your point across. These strategies take many forms, from hand signals to indicate an item on a menu to using non-sequitors to feign comprehension at times to keep the flow of a conversation from grinding to a halt -- I've actually done this while getting sloshed with British friends in Japan when I couldn't quite tell what they were talking about. I have a gaijin friend who's a full professor at a Japanese university, and he actively avoids using proper keigo, or formal polite Japanese, going out of his way to make some mistakes in his speech when talking with the other professors. The reason, he says, is to keep the staff of his university from knowing how fluent his Japanese is, since they might pile unwanted translation work on him if they knew of his linguistic abilities. Plus he wants to remain humble and raise up his Japanese colleagues: although he could pass level 1 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, the primary test for students of the language, he avoids taking this step, since most of the professors he works with haven't passed their level 1 of the "Eiken" test (the corresponding test for English).

Heading into the convention center now. Why don't you join me for some fun at Comic-Con?

One of the major differences bewteen Comicon and Anime Expo, other than the fact that the population of my Japanese home city is around me on the convention floor at the former, is the cosplay differences: there were not many costmes at all at SDCC, but 33-50% of the fans at AX were in costume.

Lots of interesting T-shirts, yes. Since she likes the military uniforms, I gave her a catalog with our upcoming game.

I always get culture shock at all the tattoos and face-piercings (in some cases, "harpoonings" is the only term to use), which of course they don't do back in Japan too much. This woman had a Monopoly board on her arm -- pretty cool.

Nice button. Pretty wacky.

Close-up. Incidentally, I was using my Treo 650 that I bought for use in America (won't work in Japan though, grrr), which isn't as good in the camera-department as my normal camera.

We had this girl in costume hold our school bag from Matsukameya, and it looked really good in her hands. We got a *ton* of interest in the school uniforms we sell.

This guy looks like he's cosplaying Ray Bradbury cosplaying Mr. Spock.

Cool costume. He used a real flight helmet for the helmet part, too, for extra realism.

Another Mei. This one was cuter than the last one I took a picture of.